'She's finished': Looks like Kirsten Gillibrand didn't miss a chance to capitalize on Washington's 'soft corruption'

Sarah D | 3:11 PM on March 28, 2019

Oh, this is just too perfect:

The Republican tax overhaul gave a New York Democratic senator a tax break. https://t.co/bHMzOjaiAT

— Bloomberg Tax (@Tax) March 28, 2019

More from Bloomberg:

Gillibrand became the first 2020 contender to publish her 2018 tax return on Wednesday, showing how she fared following President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul. Gillibrand, who has said the tax law is an example of “Washington’s culture of soft-corruption at its worst,” got a tax cut worth several thousand dollars, according to two accountants who viewed the returns.

The exact comparison is difficult because Gillibrand reported more in income in 2017 than in 2018, but Gillibrand saw “significant savings” from the tax bill, said Michael Knight, an accountant at Knight Rolleri Sheppard in Fairfield, Connecticut.

…

Trump’s tax law nearly eliminated the [Alternative Minimum Tax], so Gillibrand paid her taxes following the regular system this year. Under the AMT, Gillibrand couldn’t deduct her SALT at all, so now she gets to write off $10,000 of her $35,606 state and local tax bill. That gave her a new tax cut, Rossman said.

She was also able to take a new deduction for pass-through income on her book income, said Kyle Pomerleau, chief economist at the Tax Foundation. The benefit of the pass-through deduction and not getting swept into the alternative minimum tax outweigh the SALT cap, he said.